Committed to making us all at least 1% more conscious about education, national politics, CT politics, and culture.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

A Different World

It seems that a lot of politicians are seeking out new ways to connect to a younger, more technologically savvy generation of voters. This demographic is often regarded as apathetic, lazy and wholly self-involved. How does one approach such a population? Appeal to their intellect? Engage in real (as in, not just photo-op) conversations and offer them representation? No, just have them submit questions they record on their webcams!

As I have previously stated, I don't think ring tones and YouTube are really effective ways to get the younger, Wi-Fi enabled voting pool to the polls. Granted, not all of the participants who submitted questions for the candidates were necessarily young, but this YouTube debate is just one of many (some might say misguided) attempts to shake up the old, more traditional campaigning strategies. But this is not what America's youth needs. We need better education to enable us to make informed decisions and participate in debates and elections with a satisfactory knowledge of what the hell is going on. We need to know what these people stand for, not who has the best Myspace layout.

Is any of this even working? I'm skeptical. After all, the number of individuals who submitted self-recorded questions for the individuals vying to become the next President of the United States was around 3,000. When Sean "Diddy" Combs took to the same demographic and asked them to submit an application using YouTube so he could find his next assistant, he found himself with over 10,000 to choose from. Something just seems off, don't you think?

This current campaign for the White House is leaving me with the distinct feeling that my intelligence is being insulted. But, then again, I guess that's normal.

1 comment:

10,000 applicants for P. Diddy's assistant as opposed to 3,000 submissions to the Democratic presidential candidates, during a time of war and great division in this country...? Telling, very telling. It's a Hey Paula sort of culture.